They went into the billiard-room. Mosenberg was not permitted to play, as he had not dined in the club, but Ingram and Lavender proceeded to have a game, the former being content to accept something like thirty in a hundred. It was speedily very clear that Lavender’s heart was not in the contest. He kept forgetting which ball he had been playing, missing easy shots, playing a perversely wrong game, and so forth. And yet his spirits were not much downcast.
“Is Peter Hewetson still at Tarbert, do you know?” he asked of Ingram.
“I believe so. I heard of him lately. He and one or two more are there.”
“I suppose you’ll look in on them if you go North?”
“Certainly. The place is badly perfumed, but picturesque, and there is generally plenty of whisky about.”
“When do you go North?”
“I don’t know. In a week or two.”
That was all Lavender hinted of his plans. He went home early that night, and spent an hour or two in packing up some things, and in writing a long letter to his aunt, which was destined considerably to astonish that lady. Then he lay down and had a few hours’ rest.
In the early morning he went out and walked across Kensington Gardens down to the Gore. He wished to have one look at the house in which Sheila was, or perhaps he might, from a distance, see her come out on a simple errand? He knew, for example, that she had a superstitious liking for posting her letters herself; in wet weather or dry, she invariably carried her own correspondence to the nearest pillar-post. Perhaps he might have one glimpse at her face, to see how she was looking, before he left London.
There were few people about; one or two well-known lawyers and merchants were riding by to have their morning canter in the Park; the shops were being opened. Over there was the house—with its dark front of bricks, its hard ivy, and its small windows with formal red curtains—in which Sheila was immured. That was certainly not the palace that a beautiful sea-princess should have inhabited. Where were the pine woods around it, and the lofty hills, and the wild beating of the waves on the sands below! And now it seemed strange and sad that just as he was about to go away to the North, and breathe the salt air again, and find the strong West winds blowing across the mountain peaks and through the furze, Sheila, a daughter of the sea and the rocks, should be hiding herself in obscure lodgings in the heart of the great city. Perhaps—he could not but think at this time—if he had only the chance of speaking to her for a couple of moments, he could persuade her to forgive him everything that had happened, and go away with him—away from London and all the associations that had vexed her and almost broken her heart—to the free, and open, and joyous life on the far sea coasts of the Hebrides.